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CPI (M) moving closer to landlords: FB

By Our Special Correspondent

KOLKATA DEC. 30. With panchayat elections in West Bengal due early next year, the ruling Left Front partners are taking positions to retain their bases as a result of which they often end up attacking the CPI(M), which is perceived as trying to hijack their constituents.

At a rally on Saturday, the Forward Bloc charged the CPI(M) with pandering to the jotedars or the landlords, the class the Leftists had fought over the years. The CPI(M) said the charge was "baseless.''

The FB secretary, Debabrata Biswas, said: "The landlords who robbed the poor peasants of their lands are now figuring in important positions in the CPI(M). That is the reason why the Left supporters are moving closer to the ultra-Left groupings such as the People's War.''

The other partner, the Communist Party of India (CPI), however, was not supportive of the Forward Bloc's tirade. It thinks that the FB had crossed the limits by projecting the CPI(M) in public as pro-landlord, a label considered a taboo in rural Bengal.

"The FB crossed all limits when it talked about a landlord-CPI(M) nexus. No, no we don't support such criticisms against a Front constituent,'' Nandagopal Bhattacharya, Irrigation Minister, and top CPI functionary, said.

Not only Mr. Biswas, other top leaders of the FB such as Kamal Guha and Hafiz Ali Sairani, both Ministers, too criticised the CPI(M) in the same vein saying it was slowly working against the poor in rural Bengal, trying to push through an agrarian policy essentially pro-multinationals.

Ordinarily, the CPI(M) would prefer to ignore such criticism but not when the crucial panchayat elections are due. It realises that keeping silent would be interpreted as an admission of the Bloc's charges.

The spat is expected to die a natural death. At the most it will continue till the panchayat polls.

That the Front leaders do not want the controversy to take an ugly turn was evident from the way they took care to avoid any mention of it in the Front meeting held today at the CPI(M) headquarters.

The constituents discussed the impact of erosion of the Ganga and Padma with all seriousness but none uttered the topic of the landlord-CPI(M) nexus.

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